I really loved the idea of these when I first heard about it. Now I can’t wait for it to be over. The whole thing leaves a really sour taste in my mouth, both toward the company and the fan community in general. The entire thing just strikes me as ugly.

Not findable at all in Canada, at least not in Québec. I kept waiting for them to show up at Toys R Us, and they never came. Series 2 had already come and gone in Stateside stores before I figured it out.

^ Agreed with Daedalus. There’s a few designs in S3 that I like, but the removal of barcodes and the behavior of speculators and hoarders has entirely put me off. I’m not going to support a product when my desire to know what I’m buying is being treated as something to circumvent or defeat, as if I was an adversary rather than someone whose money they presumably want. And I refuse to compete for the chance to guess what’s in that package against people with far more time and money than I have.

TLC can have my money for these minifigs again when they get a clue and start marketing them openly and honestly and without this idiotic artificial scarcity and product obfuscation, like they did with the “vintage” minifig packs. Until then, I’ll Bricklink the parts if I really need them.

While I sympathise with your frustration and even encourage you not to buy I can’t say I’ll do the same. I build pretty much exclusively at minifig scale so these figures represent unique parts and coloring central to my builds. They are in my mind the single greatest product Lego has produced. I wish ardently that the line was managed elsewise but it is what it is and I’m going to be showing up when stores open on inventory days and gaming the system any way I can to get my hands on cases without having to pay collector rates. I’m happy to trade figures if it helps people get some of the figures they want. I was sitting at BrickCon with an open box of series one and two for trade but it seems folks were only interrest in accumulating more figures.

I take the opposite position that these figs are the single worst product Lego has ever produced. Here’s why: no one can convince me that hoarding minifigs isn’t in direct contrast to “play well”. The figs themselves are terrific, of course, but both the distribution method and the resulting behavior it causes strike at the very core of what Lego is supposed to be about. It engenders greed, envy, and selfishness.

I don’t begrudge LTC wanting to make a greater profit, but I feel it’s at the expense of innocence to some degree. I sympathize with the desire to stock up for future projects, but buying up cases of figs as soon as they arrive in the store is selfish and directly opposed to what Lego is supposed to be about. Even if there are enough figs to go around eventually, children and fellow AFOLs pay the price for such greed. That sounds melodramatic, and perhaps it is, but that does not mean it isn’t true.

If Lego are supposed to build community, then anything that damages that community, even a little, is a step backward in my eyes. I think these figs are a wonderful thing but the impact they seem to be having, sadly, is not.

I think that these could build community if used in the right way. I’m not much of a hoarder. I’ve bought just 2 from series 1 and 14 from series 2 (and yet, no mimes).

One of the comments above was about collecting baseball cards and it got me thinking. Is there a community forum out there for people trading these figures? Surely someone wants one of my surfer dudes and is willing to give away a wicked witch.

(Please forgive my ignorance if the forum is well-known. I’m still getting into being an AFOL.)

So, it looks like the Fred Meyer chain here in the Pacific Northwest is the first to get these anywhere. What a change from having to wait for extra weeks or even months for the TLG supply chain to work its way from Enfield, CT (or wherever the distribution center is these days) to our remote corner of the US!

My lovely wife just picked up a case (note singular, all you crazy multi-case people!) for me at our local FM here in the Lake City area of Seattle.

I kinda felt sorry for this guy going through so much trouble to get Series Two. But he just bought all of the Series Three minifigs at that store, and just in time for kids to put it on their Christmas lists.
But yeah, I’m getting sick of this LEGO Minifigures thing. Everyone who isnt connected on the online community has been spending tons of money on the things they don’t want just so LEGO could make a quick buck.

It strikes me that TLG are the ones that are making this more difficult than it needs to be. The secrecy, and the limited numbers do nothing by drive up the price and the willingness to hoard.

Why not have all the figs on [email protected]? Why not stock them in their own stores in quantity?

Someone upthread make an analogy to baseball cards. It would only be correct if the Card company didn’t make them available in stores, and pretty much ensured that the target audience (children) couldn’t get near them.